The full moon stood high in the heavens, when at last they reeled drunkenly through the pointed arch. The olives of the sacred grove made black shadow masses under its silver flood. The Kairatos Valley lay dark and broad beneath it, and the sleeping city of Ekoros sprawled brown about the sinister hill of slumbering Knossos.
“We have come alive from the Labyrinth.” The voice of Theseus was hushed and savage, and his hand quivered on the Falling Star. “And we have brought back the secret that will conquer Crete!”
Swaying with the wine, Cyron spat date seeds and grunted cynically. “But we have no token of proof,” he muttered. “And blasphemy is the blackest crime. They would send us straight back to the Dark One—and make certain that we stayed!”
NINETEEN
THESEUS CLIMBED a little way back into the passage. He fumbled in a cavity, and found the thing he had left there—the tiny graven cylinder of the wall of wizardry, strung upon its silver chain. He fastened it about his neck.
Cyron, meantime, had wrapped the remainder of the food up in the altar cloth. They left the shrine, and dawn found them in an abandoned, brush-grown vineyard on the summit of a little rocky hill.
There they spread out their loot, and split the linen cloth to wrap their loins. The cool open air was incredibly fragrant and good, after the fetor of the caverns, and the rising sun was thankful to their long-chilled bodies.
They lay in the sun all morning, one eating and watching while the other slept. In the afternoon they found the thin shade of a gnarled abandoned apple tree, and Theseus talked of his plans, countering the muttered objections of Cyron.
“The Cretans won’t believe us,” Cyron maintained, “for every man who does thereby condemns himself to the Labyrinth.”
“Perhaps,” said Theseus, “but there are men who will believe—our pirates! They are slaves, now—those who are left alive—in the compounds of Amur the Hittite—so I learned when I was admiral. They’ll believe.”
Cyron wriggled his hairy brown body under leaf-filtered sun. “They might,” he muttered. “But what if they do? They are a mere handful, starved and tortured and laden with chains, already beaten by the power of Crete.”
“Then they have reason enough to rise,” said Theseus. “As all the Cretans have! And the truth we bring will cut their fetters and be their swords. There is no Dark One—those very words will conquer Minos!”
“They are good ringing words,” admitted Cyron, “but what are any words, against Phaistro’s galleys and marines, and the Etruscan mercenaries, and the brass might of Talos, and all the power of the Cretan gods?”
Theseus fingered the hilt of the Falling Star. “The Dark One was the greatest god of Knossos,” he said, “and we have conquered him.” A faint smile of eagerness touched his drawn, stubbled face. “The vessel of Cybele has yielded.” His face turned hard again. “There are only Minos and the warlock Daedalus and the Man of Brass—and, like the Dark One, they shall die!”
They left the vineyard when the sun had set, and walked down a road toward Ekoros. Theseus accosted a sweat-stained laborer returning homeward with his hoe, and asked directions toward the slave compounds of Amur the Hittite.
“That’s a strange question!” The farmer looked at them curiously. “Most men are more anxious to leave the pens than to find them. But, if tithes and taxes force you to sell yourselves to Amur, take the left turn beyond the olive grove and cross the second hill—and watch that his guards don’t kidnap you and drink up your price!”
Dusk thickened to night, and the full moon came up beyond the purple eastward hills, before they came to the slave compound. A tall palisade inclosed it, and guards leaned on lances at the entrance gate.
Dropping to all fours, Theseus and Cyron crept silently up through the weeds outside the barrier. Through the poles, they watched the chained slaves being driven in from the long day’s toil.
All the fields about, the farmer had told them, the orchards, gardens, the vineyards, belonged to Amur. His were the brickyards, the pottery, the looms, the smelter. And all his slaves were penned here, like cattle, for the night.
The wind changed, and brought a sour, sickening odor.
In an open place, between the flimsy barrack sheds and the stone trough where the slaves were allowed to drink like horses, a fire burned low. In the bed of coals stood a huge pottery urn, taller than a man, soot-blackened. The urn rang, at intervals, with a dull and muffled scream of agony.
The Gamecock’s lacerated hands were clenched.
“There’s a man in the pot!” he whispered. “But what can we do?” His hairy body shivered in the weeds. “Two men, with one sword—against that wall and twoscore of guards! We’ll be roasting, ourselves, in Amur’s pot!”
“We have the Falling Star!” breathed Theseus. “We have at least one ally within—the one-eyed man, chained to yonder post, is our Tirynthian cook, Vorkos. And we have a battle cry—There is no Dark One!” He gathered himself to rise. “Come on to the gate!”
But the pirate caught his arm. “Wait, Captain Firebrand!” he whispered hoarsely. “Here come fighting men!”
He pointed, and Theseus saw torches flaring on the road from Ekoros. Light glittered on the tips of lances. A silver horn snarled. Theseus and the Dorian dropped back in the weeds, to watch.
The torches came up to the compound’s gate. A squad of Amur’s yellow-belted guards led the way. Behind them four slaves carried the Hittite’s yellow-curtained palanquin. Behind the palanquin marched a group of black Minoan priests, with lances.
Amur’s voice rasped to the guards by the gate: “I have promised a gift to the gods. Three strong youths and three beautiful girls. They will be trained for the next bull vaulting, and any that survive will go to feed the Dark One. For the gods have favored me. My enemy, Phaistro, has gone to the Labyrinth for treason. And I am the admiral of Crete!”
His voice was a feral snarl. “Quick, officer! Light torches and drag out the strongest young men and the most beautiful girls—those that came in the last ship from the north—so that the priests of Minos can choose.”
In the shadows, Theseus touched the arm of Cyron. “Wait,” he whispered, “until the slaves are brought.”
“I’ll wait.” The Dorian shuddered. “Even longer!”
Torches moved beyond the sharpened poles. Guards herded groups of slaves out of the barrack huts, made them stand in long lines. Still, at intervals, a hollow scream of agony came from the huge black urn.
Theseus heard the snarl of Amur: “The Northman still lives, after a day and a night in the pot? These pirates are tough sticks to break. But Gothung’s fate will be a lesson to them to jump when the whip snaps.”
Cyron tensed and shivered. “Gothung!” It was a muted, savage breath. “My steersman and my friend! Come, Captain Firebrand—we have waited long enough!”
“But silently,” whispered Theseus. “Until we reach the gate.”
With the hairy bearded Dorian stalking at his arm, Theseus came to the compound’s entrance. The tall wooden gate had not been closed since Amur’s coming. Half a dozen guards stood about their watch fire, just within. It was a hundred paces to the central opening, where the urn sounded hollowly and the black priests were selecting their victims.
Well within the gate, where the light of the watch fire showed them plainly, Theseus paused and checked Cyron. He flourished the Falling Star, so that the fire shone red against its bright steel, and shouted:
“Halt! There is no need to send more boys and girls to die in the Dark One’s game—none to send them into the Labyrinth to feed him. Because the Dark One is dead!”
A breathless, startled silence fell over the compound. Slaves and guards alike paused to stare, dumfounded. Theseus stalked forward, with Cyron at his side, so that the watch fire cut them in silhouette.
“I am Captain Firebrand!”
The sword was lifted again, and his voice peeled into the hush: “Here, with me, is Cyron the Gamecock. You all know that we
both were flung into the Labyrinth, to face what your lying priests call the justice of the Dark One. Well, the Dark One met Athenian justice, instead.”
The sword flashed crimson. “There is no Dark One—and never was! All the power and the wizardry of your masters is set upon a lie. Rise, slaves! Join us, fighting men!” His voice had a war horn’s ring. “Comrade pirates, avenge Gothung! Down with Minos! Set men free from wizardry!”
That challenge broke Amur and the black priests out of their paralysis. Angry voices cracked. The eight priests, with lances leveled, came charging toward the gate. And Amur screamed a command for the guards there to seize the intruders.
The guards hung back, however, obviously impressed by the challenge of Theseus. Only their captain, after his men had failed to obey the command, rushed at Theseus with his long sword lifted. Steel met bronze, and the old delight of battle turned steel to lightning. The captain fell, and Theseus cried again:
“There is no Dark One!”
“That is blasphemy!” screamed the leader of the charging priests. “The Dark One will blast him down!”
But Theseus did not fall. He went on to meet the black priests. And Cyron, snatching the sword and shield of the fallen captain, followed him.
“Rise, comrades!” called the pirate. “Remember Gothung! There is no Dark One!”
Hoarsely, somewhere in the barrack sheds, that cry was repeated. It ran along the waiting lines of slaves. It echoed. It grew into a bellow of furious revolt. The slaves fell upon the guards, fighting with their very chains.
Theseus and Cyron met the black-clad lancers. Two against eight. But the first hewing sweep of the Falling Star cut the shaft of a lance, left a useless stick in the hands of the foremost priest. Cyron caught another on his shield, and his bronze blade ripped a throat. Then the guards came running behind them, echoing:
“There is no Dark One!”
That war cry rang through mad confusion. It pealed above screams and moans and hoarse commands and the furious clash of weapons. Not half the guards joined the revolt, nor half the slaves broke their chains, and for an endless time the issue hung in doubt.
Theseus battled in a mad world of fire and reeking blood and stinging sweat and smoke and darkness and weariness and screaming pain—and savage elation turned the Falling Star to a live and terrible thing in his red hands.
“Fire the barracks!” shrieked Amur, when the decision turned against his men. “Let them roast—to the glory of the Dark One!”
Amur’s guards ran with torches among the flimsy, reed-thatched huts, in which half the slaves still were chained, and turned them to roaring pillars of yellow death. Red madness flickered back from Amur’s close-set eyes, and he screamed from the yellow-curtained palanquin:
“Drive them all into the fire—the Dark One will find them there!”
But the mutineers had caught a new flame of strength and valor. Even the slaves in the burning huts broke their fetters, or pulled up the posts to which their chains were fast, and came out fighting.
The Falling Star cleft the skull of a black lancer. And Theseus discovered that the battle was done. The Minoan priests were dead, and all the guards who had not joined the mutiny.
Cyron gripped his quivering arm. “Catch your breath, Captain Firebrand!” gasped the red-dripping pirate. “You have earned it!”
Theseus wiped his blade and stared around him. The victorious survivors of the mutiny—in all, nearly two hundred men and women, slaves and former guards—were crowding away from the still-flaming ruins of the barracks, into the open area.
Screams of agony bubbled hollowly in the huge black jar.
“Gothung!” choked Theseus. “Still—living!”
He started toward the jar. But Vorkos, the one-eyed Tirynthian cook, was building up the fire about it. He pointed to a brown, shapeless thing beside the coals.
“That’s our comrade,” he said. “It’s Amur in the pot—and never I fanned my fire with a better will!”
Theseus walked among the survivors, greeting those who had been with him on the pirate galley. Then he mounted a pile of fagots, near where Amur screamed, and said:
“Men and women! You were slaves—but you have fought, and you are free. The thing that set you free is a truth that the Gamecock and I brought back from the Labyrinth. Don’t forget—”
“There is no Dark One!”
A shout of elation, the response rolled back: “There is no Dark One!”
Theseus lifted the Falling Star. “You were slaves, and now you are free. But your freedom is still in danger. Because you have other masters—other enemies. Remember—their only power is the lie of the Dark One!
“Minos will come against us, now, with his hired Etruscan killers. He will attack us, with all the tricks of his lying wizardry. But there is no Dark One—that is the truth that will destroy the warlocks.
“Now patch up your wounds. Strike off your fetters. Arm yourselves, from the men we have slain. But don’t forget that your best weapon is that one truth—there is no Dark One!”
A chant of victory rolled up into the smoky night: “There is no Dark One!”
Theseus stepped down from the pile of wood beside the screaming urn, and Cyron caught his arm. Hoarse from shouting in the battle, the pirate’s voice was strained with new apprehension.
“Captain Firebrand!” he gasped. “The flames must have warned the warlocks! For the scouts we sent are already back. They say that the Etruscans are already marching here from Knossos—four hundred strong—to wipe us out!”
TWENTY
“AND THE Etruscans,” Cyron went on anxiously, “can’t be defeated by the simple truth that there is no Dark One. They fight for hire, and Minos lets them practice their own grim worship, without regard for the Dark One.”
The keen eyes of Theseus swept the high palisade, the red coal beds where the barracks had been, the huddled battle-weary mutineers. His bare shoulders drew straight, and his hand went hard on the Falling Star.
“If the Etruscans fight for hire,” he said, “they will fight for us when we have taken the treasury of Knossos.”
Cyron stared and grunted doubtfully.
“A hundred men,” Theseus told him, “can hold the palisade until the dawn, even against a thousand. I am going to leave you to hold it. I’ll take sixty men and slip past the Etruscans and storm the palace tonight.”
“Tonight?” breathed Cyron.
“Crete had three gods,” rang the low voice of Theseus. “One of them still stands against us. Minos must die—tonight!”
Cyron studied his face in the fire glow and looked uneasily toward Knossos. “A hundred men,” he said, “could hold the compound—against the Etruscans. But Minos may send lightning to fire the walls! Or the brass man to break them down!”
“You needn’t fear that,” Theseus promised him grimly. “I’ll keep Minos and all his wizardry busy at Knossos.”
But the hairy pirate caught his arm again. “I wish you wouldn’t leave me, Captain Firebrand.” His voice was unsteady, choked. “We have been comrades in many dangers.” He gulped. “Let … let us take all who will follow and fight our way to the harbor town. We can be at sea by dawn, in the best galleys of Crete!”
“You shall have them, Gamecock—when we have taken Knossos,” promised Theseus. “Now I am going to call for sixty willing men, to loot Knossos and end the domination of wizardry.”
He climbed back to the pile of wood, and called for the volunteers, and waited. But none came forward.
“We can fight men,” muttered the one-eyed Tirynthian cook. “But you ask us to make war on wizards and gods and a giant of brass!”
The Falling Star burned red in the fire glow.
“And they can be destroyed!” shouted Theseus. “The Dark One was the greatest god of Crete—and the Dark One was a lie! Blind fear is the sword and the yoke of wizardry—and it is fear of tricks and lies!
“Follow me—and remember there is no Dark One! The warlocks
and the gods will fall before us. Even the brass man cannot stand against that truth. Now, who will come with me to claim the loot of Knossos?”
After a little uneasy pause, the one-eyed Tirynthian cook limped forward alone. “I’ll go with you, Captain Firebrand,” gasped Vorkos. “We must destroy the warlocks, as you say—or we shall be destroyed.”
Theseus pointed at the tall black urn. “It is a law of Minos,” he said, “that slaves who kill their masters shall die by slow torture. The pot is silent now. We must kill Minos tonight!”
That grim reasoning brought forward a steady trickle of men. Most of the surviving pirates came, and even a few of the former guards. Half a score of the blond Northern slave girls joined them. At first Theseus thought to stop the women. But when he saw the look upon their faces, and the way they carried their well-stained weapons, he let them come.
When the sixty were gathered, he led them to the gate, and turned back to promise Cyron: “When you see flames above Knossos, you can tell the hired Etruscans that their wages are stopped!”
The bearded Dorian came, blinking and blowing his nose, to embrace him. Then the tall gate creaked shut behind them. Theseus led the sixty in single file down a dry moonlit ravine toward the Kairatos River.
They lay hidden in black pools of shadow while the torches of the Etruscans marched along a hill above them. Then, silently—as the pirates had learned to march in a hundred midnight raids—they moved on through sleeping fields and dark groves and shadow-clotted vineyards.
One of the Cretan guards—who had joined them because Amur had given a girl slave whom he loved to the Minoan priests—silenced the barking dogs with his bow. There was no alarm, and at last the looming bulk of Knossos rose against the moonlit sky before them.
The palace was not a fortress. The first of its fabled walls was the fleet in the harbor, three miles away. The second was brazen Talos, whom they had not seen. The third—if Theseus could believe Ariadne—was the little talisman that he wore at his throat.
The Reign of Wizardry Page 14